Keep. It is a popular tourist trip and we seem to have a user willing to work on it. Why not encourage him or her? We do cover things like the Three Gorges boat trip, Felucca cruise on the Nile. This seems to me to be of the same ilk; one of the standard things to do in that country. Pashley 10:14, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

Delete. This is one specific tour operator (albeit owned by the gov't), and doesn't qualify as an article. There's been dissent on even having the much broader Rail travel in India article, so a much finer grained one doesn't really make sense. This train can easily be covered at India#Get around, and/or at Rail travel in India, if that article sticks around – cacahuatetalk 17:02, 25 March 2009 (EDT)

Keep. As Pashley says, it's a popular trip, and one that takes about as long as the Trans-Siberian Railway too. The incredibly florid yet ungrammatical prose ("A journey absolutely corresponding to one’s odyssey through one’s world of whims and fancy"!?) needs some major weed-whacking though... Jpatokal 22:29, 25 March 2009 (EDT)

Keep. As one planning a visit to India, I think this information could be very interesting. May be out of my price range though. 2old 10:10, 26 March 2009 (EDT)

Keep. This train is one of India's biggest tourist attractions, and the current article has enough info to justify keeping it around. While it doesn't fit into our typical geography-based hierarchy I agree with Jani that it's comparable to something like Trans-Siberian Railway and thus worth an exception under the "enough information to merit its own article" guideline. -- Ryan • (talk) • 10:22, 26 March 2009 (EDT)

Merge & Delete. It seems that there's already broad support to keep the article, but I agree with Cacahuate that, given we are talking about one specific tour operator, it makes more sense to merge it into Rail travel in India. This article isn't very large; I think merging can reasonably be done. As a comparison, Rail travel in the United States had info about a private train tour operator very similar to Palace on Wheels before said operator went out of business. PerryPlanetTalk 19:05, 26 March 2009 (EDT)

See, I don't think the article is about "a specific tour operator", but a specific itinerary around northern India. Would it make sense to recast the article so that it covers the route both as the "packaged" Palace on Wheels, and a roll-your-own version on normal trains? Jpatokal 23:51, 26 March 2009 (EDT)

Yes, that would make sense to me. PerryPlanetTalk 00:03, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

The Palace on Wheels is very much a specific tour operator, on a route that is covered by many modes of transport, and doesn't offer anything unique other than a more cushy seat.... everything that needs saying about it (it's luxurious, pricey, food's good) can be said in like 3 sentences at Rajasthan#Get around. A separate article on it would be taking us in somewhat of a new direction, and I think down a slippery slope... not to mention that there isn't even enough to say about it to fill even a small article, that wouldn't be total fluff or misplaced... so I stand strong that it should be deleted.

If the route were somewhat interesting and in need of a general itinerary, then I would agree we could morph it into that and cover all of the transport options.... but the tour they do is quite straight forward and run of the mill, and just covers the major destinations in Rajasthan, hitting all the spots that visitors to Rajasthan hit anyways, regardless of their method of transport... I don't really see much value in it as a broad itinerary article either, which would need to be written from scratch by someone who cares... there isn't existing info in this article that helps in figuring that out, so I don't see that we need to discuss Rajasthan itinerary articles further on the VFD page... we should stick to discussing this article that's up for VFD.... and imo, it's not even close to qualifying :) – cacahuatetalk 03:19, 27 March 2009 (EDT)